


Try Not to Overthink This One

by firelord65



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: At least two, Bad Cooking, Fluff, Gen, How many engineers does it take to work an ice cream machine?, Platonic Relationships, Slice of Life, dorks being dorks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:28:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22594057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firelord65/pseuds/firelord65
Summary: On a rare moment of shore leave, Sylvia brings Po a treat - a classic human ice cream machine and enough milk substitute & rock salt to fill a small freezer with the spoils. Trouble is, neither one can quite figure out how to get the damn thing to work.
Relationships: Me Hani Ika Hali Ka Po & Sylvia Tilly
Comments: 14
Kudos: 22
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Try Not to Overthink This One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [facethestrange](https://archiveofourown.org/users/facethestrange/gifts).



It should have been dead simple for them. Between the two young women they had roughly three and a half degrees (Tilly preferred to think of her bio-engineering minor as basically half a degree right there on it's own, never mind all the background radiation of working with Stamets on the spore drive giving her even more experience, albeit in a very specialized field). Both were skilled engineers. Tilly had manufactured a freaking  _ replicator _ before. Yet neither she nor Po could reason out how to get the turn-of-the-century device in their possession to function properly. 

“You must be doing something wrong with the formula,” Po snapped. Her fingers scratched at the lid of the machine as she pried it open for the fifth time in as many minutes. They had hardly given it a half-dozen minutes to run in this last cycle. There simply had been no discernible progress. 

Tilly closed her eyes and counted to ten. Po was still very much a young adult. She might have been royalty but she was just seventeen standard years. “It’s a recipe not a formula,” Tilly corrected her through gritted teeth.  _ Maybe it was just the universal translator failing them both. _

Po sniffed at the mixture within the machine. She dipped two fingers in and lapped at the thin mixture. Her face twisted in disgust. Her inner eyelid fluttered. 

“This can’t be right. There’s far too much salt.”

Tilly returned to her PADD. Her careful notes from the start of this “research venture” had devolved into a series of angry, red strikeouts and hastily entered annotations. “I don’t get it either. Rock salt is a key component in so many of these recipe lists. But I swear ice cream hasn’t ever been salty like this, even back in the 20th century,” Tilly muttered. 

She didn’t bother paying attention to the low grumble coming from Po’s direction. The universal translator couldn’t mask the irritation in Po’s chirps and snarls of her native tongue. It probably wasn’t a very royal suggestion, anyway. 

“Here,” Tilly said with forced cheerfulness. This had been  _ her _ idea after all. Get together for a break from the mania of the Red Angel hunt and make some ice cream in a vintage style ice cream machine. Hang out with Po and hear all about the coronation. “Let’s go back to the first recipe, the one that allegedly came with the Kitchenaid model.”

“I thought we ruled that one out since this is a… Sehrs? Seers? I still don’t know how to pronounce this.” Po poked one clawed finger harshly at the logo that was barely hanging on to the plastic shell of the ice cream machine.

“Sears. You had it the second time, basically,” Tilly said. 

She scrolled through her notes to find the original manufacturers manual that someone had helpfully uploaded into the Starfleet archives some eighty five years ago. It wasn’t really the same as theirs, but when you were working with antiques you had to make do. 

Po emptied the center bowl of the machine, wrinkling her nose as she dumped the mixture into the sink. “There’s no salt in this recipe, right?” she questioned. 

“No salt,” Tilly confirmed. The recipe sounded most similar to what she would have expected to be used in an ice cream even if it didn’t correlate to the other historic texts from the era. 

“We’re going to heat up the mixture first to get everything to solubilize,” Tilly called out. Po clicked the stove-top back on. They’d given up on it about… an hour ago? At least that long. 

“Starting with cream and sugar.”

“How many ‘we cups’?” Po asked. She held the measuring cup between two fingers, skepticism laid out over her face. 

Tilly laughed and shook her head. “It’s an abbreviation, remember. U S cups, not the word ‘us’,” Tilly reminded her. That has been its own far-too-long complication of understanding what the recipes had been asking for. What was wrong with good old fashioned SI units? The system was certainly in place by the time these recipes had been printed. 

“How many cups?” Po repeated. Tilly listed out the amounts and checked them off with her stylus. For the solid ingredients, Po carefully leveled the measuring cup with a steady sweep of her finger each time. 

Once the mixture was homogeneous, they stuck it in the blast chiller to quickly bring it down to temp. There was a time for historic accuracy - the whole point of this exercise - but there was also a limit to Tilly’s shore leave. They still had a whole movie night plan to execute after the ice cream was set up. The last thing that Tilly wanted was to have to ditch Po right at the good part of the film. She had been  _ so _ excited when Tilly first mentioned the opportunity to grab some shore leave in their messages. 

Tilly frowned as she swiped through to the next page of the manual. “Oh come  _ on _ ,” she hissed. Po tipped her head and sidled next to her to read over her shoulder. 

“Don’t tell me. There is salt after all,” Po mused. 

Tilly jabbed her stylus at the offending line. “Two heaping handfuls.  _ Handfuls? _ That’s ridiculous! I don’t understand why the hell they’re putting salt in ice cream!” She let Po take the offending PADD, crossing her arms tightly over her stomach. Her feet took her in tight circles pacing the floor. 

Po frowned at the screen. “It says to put it in the chamber with ice,” she read carefully.

Tilly nodded. “That also seems super weird. There isn’t literal ice in ice cream. I know that one for certain.”

“And then put the bowl into the chamber on top. Make sure it’s seated on the base correctly to allow for movement. Tilly… I think this is separate from the mixture,” Po said. 

“Ice in ice cream. What the hell will they think up next?” Tilly continued, not having listened to the young woman. Po grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. 

“Tilly.  _ Tilly _ . Sylvia!” Po insisted. Tilly’s rambling thoughts cut off as she snapped her mouth shut. Her brow furrowed and then her eyes widened brightly. 

Tilly clapped her hands together. “It’s separate from the mixture! Po! You’re a genius!” she cheered. 

Po laughed. Then Tilly chuckled. Within moments the pair were cracking up, shoulders shaking and cheeks burning. 

“The salt lets the water get colder than freezing!”

“It’s to keep the environment cold enough to form the right consistency!”

Neither young woman recovered quickly. Po sank onto her stool, orange tinting her cheeks under her blue markings as she flushed. Tilly covered her face with her palm, still shaking her head. “We’re complete morons,” she moaned. 

“How many batches did we try?”

“We wasted like… three pounds of salt today.” 

“Next time  _ I’m  _ picking the research project.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first chance to kick around in the Star Trek fanfic world. This was a real fun piece to work on! I hope that it was everything fun, dorky, and lighthearted that you wanted, Chocolate-boxer :) Tilly and Po are so fun together. This was my excuse to go find their Short Trek episode together and finally watch it! I'm glad I did.


End file.
